my obsession w/ bananas didn't necessarily start in Japan...(i've always known they were healthy and ate them for their health benefits and as a quick way to charge/recharge for triathlon-training)...it's just that i ate them so much more (almost exclusively) in Japan b/c they were the only fruit that was relatively cheap ALL the time.
strawberries? unless you get them in season (even then, only at the super-cheapo store), they're going to cost you about 7-800yen a little box. apples? sometimes they're around +100yen each! same w/ oranges, grapefruit, etc...oh and don't even THINK about buying grapes. but BANANAS on the other hand...AHA! they're always less than 200yen for a little bundle of 4-5. if you want the "fancy" ones with the sticker that says "del Monte" or "Dole" well, then you may pay 1-200yen more, but still they're a bargain compared to the rest.
and did you know: a "long time ago..." bananas used to be really expensive in Japan? so expensive in fact, that they were only reserved as a food to be bought for consumption if you were sick/ill??? i'm not joking...this information came from more than one local source in Japan, and was confirmed every time i asked to make sure...wow.
but ANYWay...so i adopted the banana as my ichi-ban suki no furutsu (favorite fruit) here in Japan, and as one would observe from reading all the notes/letters my students wrote me...everybody knew it too. pictures and writings about turtles and bananas filled pretty much every other page, along w/ all the usual "thank you's", "i love you's", "i need you's", "please come back to Japan/our school's", "i have a stomach ache's"...(yeah...some kid wrote that, funny boy)...can't fault them for consistency i guess.
anyway, those notes/letters are a whole other post all together - probably my most treasured cargo from Japan (even more so than all these tshirts!), but where was i again?? o right...the bananas.
so i biked to/from school every day, and pretty much 99% of the time i left school on my bike, i'd have a banana all unpeeled and ready to eat for the ride home. whether it was a long ride...or short ride...didn't matter. at first kids would be wide-eyed/laughing hysterically, and eventually the more outgoing ones would even come up to me as i was walking over to my bike and "check-up" on me and ask something about "where's the/your banana?".
i'd find a garbage can to throw the peel in along the way home (usu. at a konbini) too, or i'd toss it in my basket and throw it away when i got home. never, not EVER did i litter...b/c well, hey i'm a teacher and i'm supposed to set a good example right? right...
the looks/comments you'd get from just eating a banana in public, albeit riding a bike, just hilarious. you'd think nobody in the city had ever seen someone eating a banana before or something...either that, or they were just so happy to be able to say an English word (they'd point and say: "OH! Banana!!"). i guess it could be b/c it's such a bright yellow fruit, highly visible...they even have a whole family of cartoon characters that are...well, bananas! "elite" bananas, led by the one named "banao". and nowhere else i've been has had so many t-shirts that feature bananas as well...so in a way, i guess it was just meant to be.
ok that's enough about bananas for now i guess...if you'd like to know more about bananas, bananas in Japan, or Japanese bananas vs. other foreign bananas, i'd love to have a chat about it over a cup of banana juice or something. really, i would.
i leave you w/ yet another banana-t...this one i call ero-banana:
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